


Trust

by themantlingdark



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Parent/Child Incest, yes i did
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-25 03:46:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21349717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themantlingdark/pseuds/themantlingdark
Summary: Thor has her trust.
Relationships: Frigga/Thor (Marvel movies)
Kudos: 25





	Trust

**Author's Note:**

> An old fic I forgot to post when I restored my stuff.

Thor’s face dissolved in ripples as he dragged his razor through the water. His features only fully reformed as he made the last pass under his left ear. He hadn’t glanced at his reflection at all while he was shaving. He knew the shape of his face without having to look. Instead he stood, naked from the waist, and stared out the window, looking not at the mountains or at the treetops, but at the air between them: three open miles, soothingly empty.

When he did look down into the basin he saw the face he’d worn back when he'd belonged to himself. He’d been so keen to leave it behind, wanting a beard to rival his father’s, hoping to add more bulk to his jaw--and a beastliness.

The protection that his beard had provided left his skin smooth and pale, untouched by light or by flesh in over three hundred years. It looked like he was wearing his mother’s powder. He smiled and shook the razor in the water to rinse off the last of his whiskers.

The night before, he’d been remembering his father’s beard and the memories reminded him to remove his own.

When Thor was small, he would play the hunter and Odin would be the bilgesnipe. Odin would disappear while Thor counted to ten twice, and then Thor would tiptoe through the halls looking for the king, tapping him on the leg when he found him. After that, Odin would count to twenty, and if he found Thor within the first three minutes of his search he would snatch him up, making growling sounds all the while, and rub his whiskers all over Thor’s cheeks and belly until Thor was shrieking and thrashing and breathless and his skin had gone bright red. Thor took to hiding under his mother’s skirts, standing on her right foot and clinging to her knee as she walked through the gardens or worked at a loom. He could feel the muscles in her leg flexing as she carried him along, working that little bit harder to maintain an even gait with his added weight. As the minutes would wear on in his hiding-place his mind would run out of places to wander. He would grow calm, then bored, then too warm and a bit sleepy, and finally he’d suck bruises onto her skin in neat little rows to amuse himself. Centuries later, he had asked her if he’d gotten her into trouble with the love-bites. She’d said no, she had always healed them up so that Odin couldn’t guess his hiding place.

Thor was staring out at the air again when the world grew darker by a barely-perceptible degree. If he had blinked he would have missed it, but because he was gazing out at the clear blue sky, it was unmistakable. She’d just put a ward on his room. He wasn’t sure why.

He mopped his face to clear away the scattered streaks of lather before he turned.

“You’re early,” Thor noted, and his smile put a bounce in the words.

“Of course I am.”

“Are you all right?” he asked, ducking his head slightly to search his mother’s face as his hands settled on her shoulders.

“Not a scratch,” she said, raising her eyebrows in her silent I told you so. “Have you thought of your test?”

“Yes, but…”

“But what?”

“But since you’ve been gone, I’ve discovered I can’t trust it.”

“Why can’t you trust it?” she asked, and Thor’s lips went thin with an apologetic grimace.

“The realms have taught me not to trust my mind. If someone else were to get inside my head, then they’d know the answer to my question. You could be Wanda Maximoff again--or perhaps  _ still _ if she never left. Or someone else. Or the lie could be my own. Perhaps I’m asleep in bed and only dreaming of you again. Maybe this is a story I tell to soothe myself. Maybe I truly was too slow--in wit and body both--and this is all I have left of you.”

Frigga’s face fell and she gave a slow nod. She bit her lips and took a deep breath, then patted Thor’s hips, took the hammer from his belt, and knocked its head lightly against his chest. He looked down and laughed.

“I’m still the only one who can lift her in my dreams,” Thor said quietly, and Frigga tried not to snort but couldn’t quite help herself, so it came out as a low, wheezy honk.

“Wanda Maximoff cannot reach Asgard to cloud Heimdall’s mind--or yours,” she said, as she hooked the hammer on his belt again. “She’s on Midgard. And the only person who would dare impersonate me is busy mimicking someone else.”

“Is that what Father’s doing today?”

“No, not your father,” she said, shaking her head. She looked as grave as she had at Loki’s funeral.

Thor stopped breathing and watched his mother’s eyes, waiting to see the way the lids and brows would shift to interpret her words, softening their blows.

“I was not standing precisely where Kurse believed me to be. Neither was your brother.”

He saw her brow crumple at the sight of his face.

“And where is h-” Thor began, then cut himself off just as quickly. He squeezed his eyes shut tight and clenched his jaw until it ached. “He’s sitting on the throne. And I’m back to falling for his tricks.”

“That is not a flaw in  _ you _ ,” Frigga said quickly, almost sharply, and grabbed Thor’s chin and held his gaze until he nodded once to say he understood, though when she let him go his face looked no less strained.

“What did he do with Father?”

“Your father collapsed again when he saw your brother. Loki shut him up in the old housing for the Aether.”

Frigga watched Thor’s fingers follow the braided leather on the handle of his hammer. She listened to the breath stuttering in and out of his lungs.

“So Loki meant for him to be trapped there until the next Convergence. And he knew there was no hope of Father living that long.”

“Yes,” Frigga choked.

“Where’s Father now?”

“On Alfheim, in my brother’s keeping. Which reminds me,” she murmured, and reached to her waist to remove one of the two swords she was wearing, then passed it over to Thor. “I got something for you.”

He scanned the designs on the hilt and the sheath until his heart calmed and his hands ceased to shake, turning the objects over and admiring the care that had been taken in their making.  The belt and scabbard were both of the same metal. The former was composed of wide rows of delicate links that allowed the band to move easily with the wearer’s waist. Thor peered at them, sniffed them, and widened his eyes.

“Tungsten,” Thor noted, then smiled. “Mother,” he teased, his voice going low as he pretended to chide. “This is--or was, I suppose--Surtr’s.  _ Tsk tsk tsk _ . Did you borrow Freyr’s sword to get it?”

“I did,” she confirmed, and glowed a bit at his knowing. “I wanted to make sure I couldn’t lose. No sense taking chances. Could have done without it, though.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he laughed, and all his features went sharper and darker with his grin.

“I’m afraid you’ll need it,” she said softly, and her face fell in time with his.

He nodded and stared at the weapon with his nostrils flared and his mouth set in a grimace, then sealed himself up briefly behind a slow blink of his eyes, settled, and looped the belt around his hips.

“Is Father awake?”

“No. And Freyr doesn’t think-” her voice cut off as her throat tightened around it.

“Oh, Mother, I’m sorry,” Thor breathed, and pulled her into his chest, dropping his shoulders down around her and covering her with his arms.

Behind him she saw the realm darken as thunderheads flooded the sky. The wet mineral scent of clouds was pouring off Thor’s skin, just as it had when he was a tiny bundle that fit neatly into the crook of her arm. Now the width of her chest fit neatly between his wrist and his elbow, and one of his hands could span the small of her back.

When they parted, his hair clung briefly to her lips before it fell back against his collarbones. The scent of the strands had a timelessness to her, unchanged and unmistakable century after century.

“Could I borrow that?” she asked, and he followed her line of sight to the basin in the center of the room.

“Of course.”

She pulled the pins from her braids and unwound the plaits, took up Thor’s razor, and sheared her hair off so that it stopped at the tops of her breasts. She burned the cuttings away with seidr and held out her hand.

“And Mjolnir?” she said, and Thor nodded and held the weapon out to his mother by its tail.

Frigga set the hammer on its side atop a small table.

“What did the Norns show you in the pool?” she asked.

“That four of the stones have changed hands rather a lot of late, but that Time has always belonged to Thanos, just as Soul has always belonged to you,” he finished, and pinched her lightly on the back of the arm for keeping secrets.

He hovered, watching, as she brought four jewels from her pockets. He recognized the first three as they rocked slowly on the table. The one still cupped in her palm was new.

“It’s such a lovely shade of green,” Thor murmured, staring into his mother’s hand.

“You can see it?” she asked, trapping her smile between her teeth and puffing an amused whiff of air out her nose.

“Of course I can see it, it’s right in front of me. And why is that funny?”

Frigga kept grinning as she rolled the gem in her hand, scattering little beams of green light over her skin.

“My mother gave it to me, and hers to her, and hers to her, and on and on.”

“That’s reassuring,” Thor admitted. “But that’s not what you were laughing about.”

He nudged her with his hip as he waited to catch her eye out of the corner of his own.

“What is it?”

“I’m not quite sure,” she breezed.

“Oh, I do doubt that,” Thor said, and his chest and shoulders shook with silent laughter.

Frigga pursed her lips and knocked her elbow against his ribs. When her face relaxed she was still smiling.

“Only,” she began, and briefly held her breath, then shook her head faintly before quietly forging on, “I put a spell on it almost two thousand years ago to hide it from all sight but my own.”

“Who broke it?” Thor whispered, and he watched his mother’s fingers curl shut around the stone, shifting it slightly and pressing the gem as if gauging something.

“If anyone broke it, it was you just now… but I’m not entirely convinced it did break.”

Thor narrowed his eyes at the stone, tipped his head, and hummed.

Frigga sagged slightly and rolled her head in a slow, wide circle, stretching her neck. Thor’s brightness was a beauty the realms seldom allowed anyone to truly see. He reminded her of the moths on Midgard who'd had to trade their snowy wings for grey in order to survive when soot took over their world.

“I’ll need four drops of your blood if you don’t mind,” she sighed. “Mine will do if you’d rather not, but yours will make the hammer happier.”

Thor nodded and took the dagger when she offered it, then cut his fingertip as instructed. Frigga took his hand and squeezed his finger, dotting Mjolnir’s head with four beads of red in a neat little row. She then spoke words that turned the drops into doorways and slipped the stones into the uru to make certain that only someone who was worthy could ever wield them.

“Thank you, dear. And give me your finger again,” she said, and healed the cut on his hand with a little burst of light from her finger, then kissed the spot the way she had when he was small.

When Thor picked up the hammer, he felt the stones within. Their weight was slight enough that he wasn’t worried about having to reinvent his swing. He was, however, fearful of what the stones might do to the force of the hammer’s blows--and fearful of the possibility that he would be forced to learn the answer.

Frigga watched as Thor’s upper lip began to curl under. She saw his nostrils fluttering. He had always found it easier to be kept busy than to be kept waiting.

“It’s all going to get worse before it gets better,” she warned. “Shall we hurry up and get worse out of the way?”

“Please,” he choked, and nodded gratefully.

“I need you to dress. Full armor. Sword and hammer. You won’t see me, but I’ll be right beside you. Walk as if you’re alone.”

The false Odin was sprawled on the throne, rolling Gungnir in loosely curled fingers, drilling the butt of the spear into the stone floor of the dais. His head was cocked to the side and he was shaking it as he watched Thor cross the room.

“Well, my son, what have you gotten yourself into now?” he asked. “I feel strands of seidr pouring from you, your rooms are warded, and a veil has followed you through the palace. Finally trying your hand at the family trade?”

“I wish it were that simple,” Thor said, keeping his voice low to invite confidence as he ascended the steps to the throne and knelt before it.

“Someone’s been in my rooms,” Thor confessed. “They’ve done something to Mjolnir.”

As he said it, he laid the weapon across the king’s legs.

Odin’s face frowned and his fingers hovered above the hammer’s head.

“It feels like an improvement,” Odin ventured, and his eyebrows lifted briefly before coming together again. “But to alter it, one must be able to wield it. You’re having rather hard luck with that of late. Rogers. Vision. And now your new mage friend. Is there anyone left in the realms who can’t lift it?”

“Only you, brother.”

Thor heard the tiny huff and saw the little shrug in the chest as Loki laughed. There was a dance of green and gold light while Loki let his glamour dissolve, and then he looked older and harder again. His skin was pale and ashy, his hair lank and lusterless, and his face thin and sunken.

“You look good,” Thor said softly, wincing at the smile he couldn’t keep from his lips.

“I look awful,” Loki corrected.

“That’s still better than dead.”

Loki shrugged one shoulder slowly. Thor couldn’t tell whether it was in argument or agreement.

“What gave me away?” Loki wondered.

“Your teacher,” Thor said, as he rose to his feet.

Loki lifted his head slowly. His gaze grew sharp beneath his brows.

“Though she didn’t have to tell me where to find you,” Thor continued, and his voice trembled as he tried to keep it from breaking. “You’re on the throne you said you never wanted. I feel a bit better for always believing your lies--I think you believe them too.”

Gungnir seemed to leave Loki’s hand by its own volition before it swung around to stand beside Thor. That Thor thought nothing of this was all Loki needed to know.

“Mother?” Loki breathed, and she shimmered into view in front of him.

“So it’s Mother again, is it?’ Frigga asked. “To what do I owe the honor? And how long until you rescind it again?”

Loki opened his mouth but said nothing.

“The hammer and the throne,” she sighed, almost laughing. “It must be so satisfying to have them at last. They’ll be such wonderful company to keep. We’re on our way to see another of your companions.”

“You’re not serious,” he gasped. “Thanos a monster. Mother, you can’t.”

“Needs must, I’m afraid,” she said.

“Any advice for us before we go?” Thor asked.

“If you’ll just let me up,” Loki tried, cocking his head and scowling, playing at impatience.

It was familiar to Thor: Loki pretending it was all a joke in the hope that Thor would forget that it wasn’t.

“You can advise us from the throne,” Thor said.

“I can, but I’d be a fool to trade something for nothing.”

“Ah,” Frigga nodded. “So your help is conditional. Well never mind. We’ll manage.”

“Without Mjolnir?” Loki boggled. “Without Odin? And without me? Have you both gone mad?”

“Possibly,” Thor admitted, giving Loki a tight smile. “But I won’t be empty-handed: Mother gave me a sword.”

Thor unsheathed it slightly, flooding the room with the light from its blade. It made Loki wince and recoil and his eyes remained blind for a moment even after Thor restored the room to its relative darkness.

When Loki’s vision returned, he saw four stern eyebrows. Four sharp blue eyes. Four high, flared nostrils. Four full lips. Two thick heads of matching blond waves. And two strong chins that both stood just slightly left of center on their owner’s faces.

“It won’t be enough,” Loki pleaded, rapidly shaking his head and begging with wide, wet eyes. “You’ll need the hammer too. And you’ll need help. You have to take me with you.”

“You’re free to join us whenever you choose, brother,” Thor said, leaning down to pat Loki’s knee. “And the sooner you lift the hammer, the happier your leg will be.”

They gave Loki their love and their goodbyes in case it was their last chance to do so. Frigga cast bonds, protections, and veils across all of Hlidskjalf; Loki would be safe, but he would no longer be able to use the throne to look out into the realms. Then she cloaked herself in Odin’s image and left side by side with Thor, sealing the hall shut from the outside.

  
  


Only half a day had passed when the doors to Hlidskjalf opened again and two figures entered. One in a gold cape, and one in crimson. Two tall men. Their faces were red. 

Blood that had not fully dried dripped from Thor’s cheeks and chin. He put a blindfold over Loki’s eyes while Vision held Loki’s hands behind his back. Then Thor cut his own finger and put two drops of blood on the head of his hammer. It was still resting on Loki’s leg, precisely where he'd left it.

Loki heard Frigga’s words fall from Thor’s mouth, but couldn’t imagine why Thor was saying them.

Thor slipped an orange stone straight into the uru. After that, Vision offered the yellow gem from his forehead so that Mjolnir could swallow that too, then he let go of Loki’s arms and turned to leave with Thor.

They had nearly reached the door when Loki ripped off the blindfold and screamed “Where is she?” but their strides didn’t falter and they made no answer before they left.

“My brother,” Thor said tightly, when the throne room was sealed up again.

“Yes, my sympathies,” Vision said, and Thor huffed a relieved laugh through a grateful smile and escorted him back to the bifrost.

Thor was standing on the railing of his balcony and staring up at the night sky when Frigga let herself in to check on him. From the doorway he seemed a small dark shape, blocking only a handful of stars. A trim figure rooted to Asgard by slim ankles and a bannister. Silhouetted by millions of suns that pinioned myriad planets. The length of the room performed an illusion, rendering him smaller to Frigga’s eyes than he had been when he was born. He was once again as tiny as the secret fluttering thing he’d been before there was any outward sign of his existence. Her hummingbird, who thrilled and tickled her whenever she ate something sweet--so she often ate something sweet.

Odin always insisted Thor looked most in his element across a battlefield. But, to Frigga’s mind, to see Thor at peace and from the least distance was to see him with the most accuracy; to take his measure in relation to her own definite magnitude. Within arm’s reach, he was tall and broad and blocked enough light that everything around him seemed to brighten and blur. His shadow shielded you and folded you into him until he was all there was and it was impossible to believe he could ever be overtaken or come to any end.

“I’ve always hated these rooms,” she confessed, and Thor turned and stepped down onto the rough stone to meet her halfway across the floor.

“That makes two of us,” he admitted. “I thought they were a punishment.”

“Odin hoped they’d harden you. They were his when he was young. Loki liked them because they were yours. You preferred mine.”

“Yours look like a forest at night,” Thor said, and sank down to sit on his bed, then flopped onto his back. “Even at midday. And all the rugs and weavings keep everything so quiet. Perfect for sleeping.”

“You haven’t slept at all tonight,” she noted, and settled in beside him. She needed no confirmation. The sky had been empty and motionless for hours. Aimless and uneasy.

“Victory tastes as much like blood as loss does,” Thor shrugged. “I know I should be pleased at a battle won with only one life lost, but…”

“It’s still battle.”

“Exactly,” he sighed.

“And you still dislike using so much stealth and seidr to succeed in it.”

“I know it’s impractical of me,” Thor granted, and dragged a hand over his face. “But, yes, I’d rather meet everyone head on. Give them a choice.”

“Hoping they’ll choose peace,” she finished.

“Aye,” Thor nodded. “It gives them a chance.”

“It could be their chance to kill you,” she noted, letting her head tip to the right so that she could see his face in profile. She tapped the scar on his left flank with her index finger.

“Or it could be their chance to prove me wrong,” he offered, turning toward her onto his side. “Or to make amends. I got a second chance after Jotunheim.”

“And you made good on it,” she said quickly. Her tone was proud, but firm. It made Thor suck in a quick breath and hold it until his heart slowed a bit. “Jotunheim was Loki’s failure, too,” she continued. “And he followed it by sending the destroyer to Midgard and nearly killing you. Then more fighting. Then turning the Bifrost against Jotunheim… letting go of Gungnir… bringing two worlds together for war… trapping you in a cage and dropping it from the sky… refusing every olive branch you offered him… leaving you alone and grieving to deal with Malekith… deposing Odin.”

Thor had not allowed himself to keep such a list, though the scar on his side had often tried to lure him into it.

“Father lied to him,” Thor said softly. “Things like that have a way of coming back to us.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “I knew I couldn’t trust your father’s judgment when he wanted to hide the truth from your brother. Then he rendered you mortal and set you in harm’s way on Midgard. I’d objected on both counts. One spectacular failure with each of you, I could forgive. Two with either of you, I could not. When he wanted to put Loki to death, I was finished.”

“I told Loki I’d kill him if he betrayed me,” Thor admitted, and Frigga laughed.

“And, sure enough, he betrayed you, and he’s still breathing. Did you ever really believe you’d do it?” she asked.

She felt his sigh gust out against her throat. His forehead butted up against her own and rolled slowly from side to side.

“No,” Thor conceded. “He didn’t believe it either. I’d rather die. I’ve watched him do it twice now. Can’t bear it again. It was real to me each time it happened… like it was real to Father when you fell.”

“Yes, and if Odin had only trusted me, done as I said, and killed Kurse and Malekith, it all would have been over so easily.”

“We needed Malekith to get the Aether out of Jane.”

“No. That was only one way; your father’s assessment. Between me and my brother, and you and yours, we’d have managed it. Odin always believed he knew better than I did. And all the realms have nearly paid the price for it.”

“He went mad in his grief for you,” Thor murmured, remembering how real it had seemed when he saw her fall, and recalling the agony of those hours before she came to him again, when he’d been left to wonder whether the trick had actually worked.

“And what did you do in your grief each time you believed you’d lost your brother?” Frigga asked, and again she felt the faint shaking of Thor’s head, rocking back and forth against her brow as their noses brushed together.

“Perhaps I’m a harder man than Father is,” Thor offered, and his mother laughed, loud and shocked. It was almost a scoff, but her voice stayed too fond. Free from disdain. The sound loosened the muscles that had gone tight in Thor’s belly.

“I think you might be even softer than I am,” she whispered, and reached up to push his hair behind his ear, then cupped his cheek in her hand. “And I want you to be able to stay that way.”

He covered her hand with his own, then shifted it over so that he could kiss her palm.

“You couldn’t sleep either,” he guessed.

“I didn’t even try. Why were you perched on the railing when I came in?”

Thor started laughing and rolled onto his back again.

“I was trying to decide where to go. Wanted a swim.”

“Loki told me you could fly on the wind. I thought you used a fur?”

“When I have someone with me I use a fur. Alone I don’t bother.”

“I could do with a swim,” she said, and gently kicked the side of his foot.

Thor explained the technique and they took their positions, standing side by side with a thick pelt held up in front of them and their arms linked at the elbow. On the count of three, they sprinted out onto the balcony, leapt up onto the railing, and dived off. They only dipped a few feet before the force of the wind Thor had summoned hurled them up and over the palace. Their hair whipped their shoulders and their speed sent tears blowing back into their ears as they streaked over a wood and across a lake. The gale that carried them brushed wild arcing patterns of ripples, waves, and foam into the water below them and sent spray up onto their cheeks.

When they reached the shore, they were only a foot off the ground and they skidded to a halt across a stretch of grass as the wind died out under them. Frigga stepped out of her dressing gown, took Thor’s offered arm, and they walked down into the water.

For the first few steps there were small stones that had been rounded and flattened by the brush of sand and waves for centuries. Those gave way to finer, looser mud and short frilly weeds that tickled the ankles as the pair waded through them. Then came the drop off and the smooth stalks of lily pads knocking gently against slender thighs as the swimmers passed through and moved into the deeper water where bottom was far below their feet and there were no leaves or blossoms to break the surface of the lake.

Thor tipped over to float on his back, rising with the air in his lungs and falling in its absence. Frigga turned her arms in slow circles, always keeping her head high. She watched him as she always did, still unable after over a thousand years to forget the advice given to every mother: don’t turn your back on them, they can drown in an inch of water.

Thor’s bobbing made ripples that caught and moved the stars, drawing a glittering stream of nesting halos around his shape. But they soon dimmed and shrank as he let himself sink. His legs were the first to go. Then the slim waist and broad breast. Next the long neck. And, finally, his face slid under, with eyes closed to keep them clear for when he opened them again.

The water went smooth and left no trace of him. The stars that had seemed to dance on the lake’s once-ruffled surface all stood still, sealing Frigga in emptiness between silent, symmetrical skies. The jagged peaks of mountains and the pointed tops of pines swallowed the horizon with silhouetted wolf’s teeth. The only sounds that reached her were the whisper of her own breathing and the dull roar of the blood in her ears. 

She leaned forward and looked straight down, using her own shadow to black out the stars, making a window for herself to see through. But still she saw nothing. Heartbeat after heartbeat and breath after breath passed by without any sign of his pale shape beneath the lake’s skin.

The time that had elapsed since he went under had been stretched out by worry, making it impossible for her to tell how many minutes had truly come and gone.

She began to call light to her fingertips as the water boiled in front of her and Thor surfaced, bumping into her as he rose.

“Sorry,” he groaned, and then darted in to kiss the nose he had butted. “Had my eyes closed.”

“It’s all right,” she said, suppressing a sob and a shudder. “Did you fall asleep down there?”

“Just the opposite. The water’s cooler. Woke me up a bit.”

She hummed and started swimming backward, spitting water at him as she moved toward the shore. He followed, doing a quick breaststroke in her wake until he had caught up enough to grab her by the ankles, and then she was their arms and he was their legs.

“There are blackberries at the edge of that wood,” he told her, offering his arm again as they climbed up the bank and onto the grass.

“Lead the way,” she said.

She cast lights to let them see and their skin dripped dry as their lips went purple with fruit. When they’d had their fill they picked their way back through the tall grass, raking their fingers through the furry seedheads that tickled their hips. Thor dropped onto the pelt with a relieved sigh.

“Don’t tell me we have to walk home,” Frigga said, teasing, and stretched out beside him. She snapped her dressing gown in the air and let it float down over their bodies.

“No, thank goodness,” Thor sighed. “Or we’d be spending the night here. I’ve never lived a longer day.”

“You’ve never been in labor,” she huffed, and nudged him with her elbow.

The lakewater that was held in their hair slowly soaked into the fur they were lying on, awakening the musky scent of animal that had been sleeping in the hide for centuries. The chill that had crept into their skin from the lake was deepened by the dropping temperature of the night air. They took the edges of the fur and rolled them over onto themselves in a double cocoon.

Frigga saw a wall of clouds drifting across the sky, blanketing the stars in hazy grey. She turned her head to look at Thor, who saw the motion in the corner of his eye and knew an answer was expected.

“The clouds will hold the heat of the day in a bit, so we won’t feel like we’re being rushed indoors,” he explained, in a small, almost shy voice that he too rarely had any occasion to use.

With firm earth and soft fur at their backs they relaxed, letting themselves be soothed a bit by the field’s lullaby: the simmering rustle of the wind in the grass, so reminiscent of fine rain; and the motion of the blades, waving all around them like a dry sea.

“You’re not going to tell anyone else you’re back, are you,” Thor murmured, and heard his mother sigh beside him.

“No, I’m not. It’s too convenient. I’ve never been so free. No duty or expectations but those of my own devising. No one telling me I can’t do something or discounting my ideas because I wear skirts instead of trousers. No one getting in my way.”

“Since you put it like that,” Thor said, laughing softly. “Sounds like bliss. And you have been busy--you’ve done the most remarkable thing since, well, since ever, I expect. And no one even knows it’s been done.”

“Good. I hope no one ever does. That’s the best shot it has at never being undone.”

“True,” Thor admitted, with a grudging huff. “Still, we should mark the occasion. How would you like to celebrate?”

“I think I’ll sleep in,” she said, and he shook them both with his laughter.

She tipped her head until it was pressed to the top of his shoulder and she could hear his pulse humming softly in her ear. The clouds Thor called had now completely devoured the stars, setting the sky aglow with silver light while the grass and trees went grey.

“What was your test?” she asked.

“When?”

“This morning. The question. To see if I was really me.”

“Oh that,” he said. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“When I was little, you read me a book of Vanir fairy tales, bit by bit each night, to bribe me into sleeping in my own bed. When that book was finished, you told me I was free to choose the next one. What was it, and why did I pick it?”

For a moment Frigga was laughing too hard to respond. She finally settled with a sigh and cleared her throat.

“You chose The History of the Nine Realms, which weighed more than you did, though you got it off the shelf somehow regardless. It was taller and thicker than all of the other books, and you were certain I’d still be reading it to you when you were an old man. It only took five years, as it turned out, and it always sent you to sleep as swiftly as one snuffs out a candle.”

Thor hummed and nodded.

“I wish I could remember what it felt like to believe with such certainty that I’d live to be an old man,” he said. “The storytellers have never once imagined an ending like that for me.”

She nudged his elbow up and linked her arm with his, pressing the insides of their pulse points together. She could feel his blood undulating against her own through the soft, thin skin.

Thor threaded his fingers through her fingers and pumped her hand. The warmth of him brought red into her world just as his birth had done. It had been the first--and so far the last--wound her body had sustained. The gush of blood beneath him on the bed and the gouts of it that followed, staining her sheets for weeks afterward as her body slowly stitched itself back together. But all of that had only been the mechanics of the thing. Background noise. Largely aftermath. The contractions had been the beginning of the injury; the beginning of too many endings. She would lose him to the world, and the world in turn would lose him to time. Labor had been a betrayal, too: after decades devoted to keeping him safe in her belly, her body had changed its mind and decided to drive him out. The healer had taken up the same tune, insisting that Frigga push--collaborate--because if the birth took too long the baby would be exhausted and in danger of running out of air. So push she did. It was the first time she’d ever felt that she was being cruel. When they’d cut the cord and handed Thor up to her, tiny, pink, and wailing, all she could think to say to him was I’m sorry.

“What sort of mother brings a child into realms like these?” Frigga whispered, and Thor snorted.

“Every mother,” he said, turning to kiss her temple as he squeezed her hand again. “What sort of father makes realms like these?” he asked, and then answered himself, “Every father. Or near enough.”

Frigga pecked his shoulder, untangled their arms, and rose to her feet, taking the dressing gown with her and shrugging it on. Thor was still lying on the pelt, looking like he fell there rather than set himself down deliberately. He’d always slept and rested that way. Frigga had once left Odin’s rooms at midnight and found Thor asleep at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the doors. He’d been spread out on the stone floor, arms and legs akimbo, head thrown back, looking exactly as if he’d tumbled down the steps and broken his neck. But by then she’d grown accustomed to his habits, though the sight of them never ceased to disturb her, and had simply scooped him up and carried him off to bed.

“Come on,” she said, tossing her head toward the palace and hauling him up to his feet. “If you have your heart set on celebrating, I’ve got a bottle of something that’s as old as you are. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion. I suppose this qualifies.”

“I should hope so.”

The wind dried their hair as they went, lending them that wild look of untended indifference that belongs to tiny children. Their bodies appeared slightly smaller beneath the new volume of blond waves and they saw an impishness in each other that felt earned and overdue.

“We should celebrate for six days, at least,” Thor said, holding the glasses while she divided the contents of the tiny bottle between them. “One for each stone. Or six months--or years.”

She rolled her eyes.

“I feel tired just thinking about that,” she smiled, and took her glass.

“To you,” Thor said, and clinked their little gold cups together.

“To you,” she echoed, with a playful twist to her mouth and a nod of her head.

Thor shook his head and did an impression of a long-suffering sigh and they sat down on the foot of the bed to sip their drinks.

Thor’s eyebrows leapt with pleasant surprise.

“Roses,” he said, and smiled and took another sip.

Frigga looked at him like he’d sprouted a second head.

“Oak,” she corrected, narrowing her eyes at the disparity in their assessments.

“Mine’s roses, I promise,” Thor said, and offered her his glass.

When they swapped, they found they’d each been right.

“Where did you get this drink?” Thor asked.

“My brother made it,” she said, and Thor said  _ oh _ in a way that meant he should have known. “He gave it to me when you were born. Said it would improve with age.”

“I hope he gave you something you could actually enjoy that day.”

“Oh, yes, sweets and salves and silks and all sorts of books to read with you.”

Thor hummed his approval as he rolled the liqueur over on his tongue.

When he’d tipped back the last drop, he sank into the quilts and let his eyes wander around the room. The floor, ceiling, and furnishings in Frigga’s rooms were all of dark wood. It soothed the eyes after the constant glint of polished surfaces throughout the rest of the palace. The wood absorbed sound rather than reflecting it, and it gave beneath the legs in a way that was kinder to the bones than stone pavers ever could be. The linens were the frosted green color of lichen. The weavings that lined the walls with delicate branching patterns danced in currents of silent air and gave the illusion of sunlight filtering through distant trees on a breezy day. At night, chartreuse lights of seidr the size of fireflies flew about in lazy circles to let you see.

“Do you taste raspberries and cream now?” Thor asked, when the flavor seemed to alight on his tongue.

“I do,” she laughed. “That was at least half of what I ate in the years I spent carrying you.”

Thor grinned and then rolled his eyes.

“You’re not actually exaggerating, are you?”

“Not even a little,” she confirmed. “It was fantastic.”

When Thor woke, his fingers were no longer curled around his empty cup and he worried he’d dropped it.

“I got it,” Frigga said.

She was sitting beside him again. Her arms were looped around the backs of her thighs, drawing her legs up to her chest, and her left temple was resting on her right knee. Her eyes were fixed on the gnarled red scar on his side.

“It’s ugly, I know,” Thor said. “I never went to a healer for it.”

“Oh, darling, what were you thinking?” she breathed, as she watched him trace the raised line of the wound with his fingertips.

He shook his head.

“I didn’t want anyone to see how much he hates me,” Thor replied.

Frigga let go of her legs so that she could put her hands over her face. She fell back against the mattress, shaking.

“Sorry,” Thor said, rolling over and wrapping his arm around her waist as he tucked his face into her neck. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know what’s the matter with me, Mother, I swear, I’m sorry. I’m shit at celebrating lately.”

He heard a wet laugh and felt her belly flex with it, rolling beneath his forearm. Their legs were still bunched up at the foot of the bed, so Thor got up on his knees, scooped her up in his arms, and put her head up on the pillows. He settled back in against her side and peered at the tiny blood vessels that ran through the luminous skin of her right ear.

When she finally took her hands down from her face and let out the last quavering breath, she found Thor propped up on his elbow, his eyes waiting for hers with the same unwavering blue gaze they’d always had.

“You used to do this when you were a baby,” she smiled.

“Stare, or make you cry?”

“Yes,” she teased, laughing. “No, you were always good. Just the staring. For hours.”

“Always watching your face,” he guessed.

“Like a hawk,” she smiled.

He shook his head.

“I can’t remember it,” he murmured, and parted the top of her dressing gown slightly to see the ribs that showed between her breasts.

Those bones had not been visible when he was a boy. That much he did remember.

Moving her clothes to get to her skin was familiar, however. She always wore silk, but the weave and the seams and the way the fabric would bunch up beneath him bothered his cheeks when he was little, so he would push it aside. Most often he’d set his ear to her chest to listen to her breathing while he watched her left breast move faintly with her heartbeat. He’d misunderstood about hearts being in breasts, believing back then that everyone had two hearts, one behind each nipple. He’d concluded that women’s hearts were better because they were softer and bigger.

Her skin was still the same color, too, kept hidden from the sun for over two thousand years by high necklines. The jump of her pulse in the hollow at the base of her throat looked like the tremor in a glassful of milk when someone taps the tabletop. Thor dipped his finger into it and felt the blood rising and falling at its preferred pace, as full and slow as his own. His creased knuckles seemed centuries older than the smooth skin beneath them. He was calloused and tan from sparring in the yard. When he ran his hand down the center of her chest, her skin went paler still in the paths his fingertips had taken, but then blushed a deeper shade of pink a moment later, approaching the color of his fingertips.

He flattened his palm over her sternum and felt her heart thudding behind the little plane of bone as though it would leap into his hand.

“You spent years there,” she said. “Decades, really.”

“I’ve lost most of them,” he confessed quietly, as though he’d had a choice, or it was some failing unique to him.

He brushed the silk further aside to watch the tiny motions of her left breast. The tremors were fainter now that her flesh wasn’t quite as full, but the heartbeat was still there, and it still made his breathing slow down and his eyelids feel heavy.

“I can’t remember nursing or diapers,” he murmured, speaking almost to himself. “Or wearing the little shoes you saved. My crib. My first clothes. The twenty-six years I spent in your belly. Anything. It’s all gone. For all I know I could have fallen from the sky.”

“That would explain a great deal,” she winked.

She could see the thread his mind was following. To forget was to lose something, and loss was a thing that sat in Thor’s path all too often.

“What’s the first thing you do remember?” she asked.

His eyebrows drew together and his gaze went unfocused as he sought the answer.

“Apart from being here like this... I remember playing chariot,” he ventured. “I’d sit on the train of your skirt and you’d wrap a long scarf around your waist for me to use as reins... though I mainly used it for balance. You’d put your hair in a high ponytail and you’d whinny and snort, and whenever there was a long stretch of empty hallway you’d sprint.”

“That always made you squeal,” she recalled, grinning. “You were so tiny then. That was even before Loki came.”

Dawn bled in, slow and grey, still dimmed by Thor’s clouds. Frigga woke to find that he had covered her up some time in the night. They’d fallen asleep on top of the blankets and he had folded the side of the quilt up over her rather than waking her. He was curled at her side with his forehead pressed to her shoulder.

“You’re supposed to be sleeping in,” he scolded, as she climbed from the bed.

He smoothed the coverlet and sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress. Her bed was high. His feet still dangled nearly a foot from the floor.

Frigga came back with a glass of water for them to share. She drank the first half herself; he finished it and then leaned over to set the glass on the bedside table. When he straightened she was still standing in the same spot in front of him. He drummed his toes against her shins while she ran her fingers through his hair. His head veered this way and that as she combed out the tangles that had been put there by the water, the wind, and the pillows. The collar of her dressing gown pulled down against the back of her neck as Thor untied the row of bows that held it closed. He slipped his arms inside the fabric and looped them around her waist, then leaned in to kiss the top of her belly and the bottoms of her breasts. The silk hung down around him, sealing him up with the warmth of her skin and the sleepy scent of her. He tilted his head to nudge her breast up with his cheek, weighing it with his neck, then leaned back slightly to let it slide down across his mouth, parting his lips to let the nipple pass through. He felt her breath puff down onto his face with silent laughter. It seemed to catch in his lungs, causing him to laugh too.

She dropped her arms to her sides and shook her shoulders. Thor saw the room brighten around her as her robe fluttered to the floor. He leaned back to make room as she climbed up onto the bed. She planted her knees astride his hips, grabbed him under the arms, and heaved him backward so that he sat, bouncing, in the middle of the mattress.

He offered his hands as a seat while she straightened her legs and braced her feet on the bed behind him. Once she had her arms firmly around his neck, he let go, and she sank onto him with a sigh.

He half wished that they had been weightless so that gravity wouldn’t have hurried her down. It would have been wonderful to draw it out and commit every tiny motion and texture to memory. But the ease of it had its own loveliness to him. The yielding glide of skin. The complementary fit.

“Does this count as sleeping in?” she murmured, with her lips against the bend at the side of his neck.

“Only if you fall asleep,” he said, and she hummed, considering it.

They moved just enough to keep their bodies from growing completely accustomed to the contact. Sometimes they twisted gently from side to side, rocking each other in their arms and running their fingers over the warmth of the ribs. Sometimes he would lean her back so that he could dip his head to kiss her shoulders and her breasts and the arch of her ribs; sometimes she would lean him back so that she could kiss his throat and his cheeks and edges of his lips. Sometimes a subtle thrill ran through them, like the current of a cool stream flowing against their skin. Mostly they sat, swaying softly to the rhythm of their breathing and moving small secret muscles that neither of them could see.

When they got too drowsy, she settled on her side and he curled up behind her and slipped into her again. She pressed her hand firmly against the base of her stomach so he could feel it through her skin. It made his body flex and press back up against her palm. She fell asleep with his breath on the nape of her neck and his heartbeat deep in her belly.

Weeks had passed when the doors to Hlidskjalf opened again. Loki saw a dark blue dressing gown and swaying gold hair. He smelled soaps and perfumes that he had known long before he knew anything else.

“Mother,” he called, but the blond head shook from side to side.

At first he thought she was forbidding it, but when she drew near he understood it was a different denial.

“Where is she?” Loki asked, as Thor approached the dais.

“She’s in her room, reading,” Thor answered, and slowly climbed the steps.

Loki sagged against the throne and let out a shaky breath.

“She said she set spells to keep you clean and fed,” Thor continued. “Are you well?”

“Well enough,” Loki murmured.

The closer Thor got, the more confusing he became. He was enveloped not only in the scents of their mother’s soaps, lotions, clothes, and perfume, but in the scent of her skin, and the scent of something else that Loki’s reeling mind was only willing to call woman.

“Where have you been?” Loki asked, leaning forward over the hammer to peer at his brother.

Thor said nothing and only raked his eyes over Loki as if doing an inventory.

Loki took inventory of his own. Thor’s mouth was red but his teeth had not been stained with wine. His eyelids were low and his breathing was sluggish. His hair was wet. Freshly washed. The mark of the comb’s teeth was still held in the strands. Bathwater was darkening the top of his robe. In the shadow cast by the curtain of blond, he spotted a line of bruises on the side of Thor’s throat.

“Whose bed have you been in?” Loki whispered.

Thor only stared at him.

“Answer me,” Loki snapped.

“That’s not why I came here.”

“What have you done to her?” Loki snarled.

Thor shook his head just once.

“Choose your next words with more care than that, brother,” Thor said.

The tone was not chiding. It was the one a parent uses when teaching a child. Loki knew it well. His face opened up into disbelief.

“Tell me I'm imagining it. Tell me that you haven't actually done something as absurd as falling in love with your own mother,” Loki breathed.

Shine was gathering in his green eyes. He had to stay quite still to keep it from spilling out.

“No,” Thor said, tipping his head to the side and then smiling. “I never fell out of love with her.”

Loki sat, staring, until Thor sighed.

“I came to see if your leg was all right,” Thor told him, and Loki laughed weakly.

“I don’t see how you can do anything about it now. Do you really imagine the hammer will find you worthy after what you’ve done?”

“Your leg, Loki,” Thor reminded.

“Throbs a bit,” Loki murmured.

Thor nodded and bent down, then slid the hammer into another position on Loki’s lap, not wanting to lift it entirely and risk Loki slipping away.

“Is there nothing these realms will not grant you?” Loki whispered.

“Nothing they won’t take away again,” Thor answered, and pecked a kiss onto Loki’s forehead. “Do set your mind to lifting it,” Thor said, as he descended the stairs. “She would so love to see you.”

Thor apologized the moment he stepped into his mother’s room.

“What for?” she asked, looking up to make certain he wasn’t bleeding or weeping.

“Oh, for being me, I suppose,” Thor said, settling in beside her on the bed. “He saw everything. And I never even thought to deny it. He knows.”

“I doubt that,” she said, laughing gently.

“He put it together-”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that he landed on the answer, darling,” she conceded. “That he knows, I will grant you, but he never understands.”

  
  
  
  



End file.
